


let yourself trust (once more)

by RyDyKG



Series: and the world calls you home (l’fundyburg au) [1]
Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Betaed, Clay | Dream Kills TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), Gen, Inspired by the Legend of Pandora's Box (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), Lowercase, Panic Attacks, Personification, References to Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, Scared TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), do not worry he is alive, the buildings are alive basically, yes those are the character tags.
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-11
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-15 23:15:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29940888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RyDyKG/pseuds/RyDyKG
Summary: pandora’s prison is just one of the many places that are alive. and, well, looking at her newest ‘prisoner’, she’s furious.“hope is a tender thing,” she repeats, and just when tommy’s about to ask her what she’s talking about, she turns to him with a sad little smile. “and you are broken beyond repair.”
Relationships: L’manburg & Floris | Fundy, Pandora’s Vault & TommyInnit
Series: and the world calls you home (l’fundyburg au) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2204388
Comments: 11
Kudos: 183





	1. pandora

**Author's Note:**

> warning that this is all lowercase!! im trying something new here sooo yeah
> 
> beta’ed (yes, i finally managed to get a beta pog) by the absolutely pogchamp nikades. ae were a good help in this!!
> 
> this is a fic that’s based off a wip!! said wip based off the fundy is l’manburg au from [@dreamsmp-au-ideas on tumblr](https://dreamsmp-au-ideas.tumblr.com/) (who you should go check out they have many cool ideas that you might like, and lots of people who are willing to expand on those ideas!)
> 
> this will all take place in a series btw. im planning on changing a few parts of the au to fit my thing, but for the most part, everything stays true to the original stuffs!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> pandora’s vault is alive, and she _feels._

pandora is alive.

she is alive, just like l’manburg — or camarvan, as she insists on being called — is, just like logstedshire — shire for short — is, just like marade — the only place without a permanent name — is.

pandora’s vault is alive, and she _feels_.

death is not something new to her. not in the sense that she has seen a lot of death — though she has seen her fair share — but in the sense that she has _felt_ death.

her first prisoner holds a lot of death within him. he is not close to death, but he has caused a lot of death, and pandora can feel the souls that he has stolen from the world follow. there’s no way to give them back, but she knows who he has killed, whose lives he has robbed from this earth.

pandora’s vault is a prison. so, she does her duty, and keeps the prisoner inside his prison. she learns.

dream is a misguided individual. he has a god complex, that much she can tell. he has plans upon plans that he whispers to himself, quiet enough that her warden will not be able to hear, though if he knew that she and all the others existed, he wouldn’t have even spoken aloud at all.

his cruelty disgusts her. how can someone actively know what they are doing and relish in it? she is a prison, but she does not necessarily enjoy her work. dream believes that he is in the right; he believes that he is doing the right thing for the right cause, and that is…

well, no one will complain if she removes the little comforts for the man, will they?

they say pandora’s box held some of the cruelest and evilest things in the whole wide world. pandora thinks that dream easily represents all of that.

but the fates want to stick to the myth, no matter how twisted and scarring it will be on the world, and so they shove hope in there too.

pandora is not one to be biased, because she is a prison, and everyone is the same when they are jailed and caught, but this is different. her second ‘prisoner’ is not a prisoner at all.

tommy — and she recognises the name from camar’s tales of glory and revolution — is young, and yet he holds the burdens of someone far older than a scrawny boy with barely-there skin and holding the weight of everyone on his shoulders.

pandora can see the irony in that. she is associated with a myth, too.

they call him theseus, and they compare him to those of icarus and atlas and to the heroes of old and gold.

tommy does not want to be a hero, but no matter how much he fights, his simple words are drowned out by those who speak with more prose and poetry than him. 

it’s unfair.

humans are weird. 

pandora finds herself protective of this boy. he is one of camar’s — of _l’manburg’s_ — legacies, and all the problems and troubles that have been forced upon him are cruel and unfair. he does not deserve what he has gotten; he deserves far better care, and a far better than what he has so far.

some, if they knew of her existence, might say that it is the protective nature of her warden that has been passed onto her. pandora looks at camar and her own little heir, fundy, and chuckles.

they are spirits. they have feelings too.

and so, pandora does her best to protect tommy. she does her best to keep him and dream apart, and repair the damage made to her anchor as possible.

pandora’s vault is alive, and she _feels._

there is turmoil happening within her walls. yelling, shouting, chaos and fear alike. pandora is in the midst of fixing her anchor, but she drops everything to rush into the biggest cell in her anchor.

her eyes land on the scene before her, and though she is not human, though she is the furthest thing from a human, her nonexistent breath catches, and her nonexistent heart stops.

there are three natural responses to a situation, though only two are commonly named. fight, flight, and freeze. pandora, unfortunately, has the third.

she breaks out of her frozen state, of course, but by then it is too late, and dream raises his fist and slams it down, and pandora _feels_ the death before it occurs.

pandora is not human. she is the furthest thing from human. emotions shouldn’t hit her as hard as they do.

and yet, she cannot stop the wail that escapes her lips, silent and deafening all the same. the bright soul of tommy gleams, and she _lunges_ , figure shifting into something better and more suitable.

black hair cascades down her back as her figure twists into something alike of a human’s. shining gold jewellery adorn her skin, a call to her warden’s own unique style. a dark black gown, shining with the colours of the night sky, spread down her body, and when her eyes open, she catches a glimpse of bright gold eyes in steel bars.

pandora is human. admittedly, a giant one, but well, humans have hands, and with hands, she can hold and catch and touch things.

she snatches tommy’s body before it hits the floor, and with a sweep of her gown, sends dream into a sleep full of nightmares and discomfort, filled with the agony of the lives he has taken. a little penance to pay for hurting tommy, and pandora will make sure that there will be more in the future. he will not remember her; dismiss her as a hallucination or a trick or his own mind, even, but _she_ will.

gently, she places the body down on the bed, cursing her thoughtlessness in not getting something more comfortable for him. his soul is a flickering, dying ember, mere minutes away from entering the void that is the afterlife.

pandora can save him. and she does, no matter what the others will say to her later on.

gently, she reaches _in_ , and cradles the tiny little spark of a soul in her hands. it’s so small, and so fragile and dying, and yet so _bright_. like a fire. like _hope_.

like a phoenix.

 _yes_ , she decides. _my little phoenix._

“you sweet child,” she tells the little soul in her grasps softly. “you sweet, sweet summer child.”

there are so many scars and hurts over this tiny soul. pandora cannot fix the pain, but she can do her best to soothe them.

she carries him out of the prison, to a place far far away. she ends up passing shire, who stops her for a chat. his form is as misty as always, and blood leaks out of whatever orifices his current form has. 

“is that tommy?” he asks softly. pandora nods. 

“he’s dead,” she responds, ignoring the hurt in her now-existing heart as she says those words. “dream has committed a grievous sin.”

“of course he has,” shire sighs. his expression forms something akin to conflict, before he sighs again. “dream is… he has the wrong ideas in his mind.”

“i can tell,” pandora responds wryly. her little phoenix shivers at the name, and she clutches him tighter. shire notices, as he does.

“are you getting soft?” shire asks her amusedly. pandora huffs, and ignores his words.

“maybe,” she admits. “though you cannot blame me for it. camar has done that first, after all.”

shire laughs, a soft and breezy sound. both of them know about itsfundy a little too well, what with all the gushing camar has done about him. pandora has never met fundy personally, but from the little glimpses she has of him… camar is doing a good job at caring for him.

“will you take care of him?” shire questions. he drifts closer. “he needs all the care he can get, especially after what… the man has done to him. i know this, you know this, we all do. will you?”

“yes,” she replies. “he has- he has never deserved any of this. i _will_ give him the care that he needs. you may help if you want to, though you might want to show him a more comforting look than what you have now.”

“true,” he agrees. “do you have any idea where you’re going?”

pandora shrugs. she cannot wander too far away from her anchor, but her powers are practically limitless, and she already has ideas for a home for her phoenix. yellow and white will be a good theme, won’t it? “i’ll figure it out. i may need your help on that.”

“you’ll have to bring him back eventually,” shire speaks up after a brief moment of silence. “his time on this earth is not done yet. you will have to revive him.”

“and if i bring him back? how many days will it take for them to realise?” pandora asks.

 _that he’s alive?_ she doesn’t say. _that he is scarred and scared beyond measures? that he has faced more hurt than almost everyone? that they have done something horrible when they did not think about checking up on him?_

shire offers a sad, tiny smile, and pandora is reminded of the fact that shire had been born out of trauma and hurt and both sides of the same twisted scenario. shire had been born from dissent and cruelty and abandonment and manipulation; he’ll understand this whole situation more than anyone else.

“for however long it takes for them until they need his heroics,” shire replies.

pandora frowns. “well, they cannot have him back even then.”

shire shakes his head. “his time on this earth is not done yet,” he repeats, and pandora makes a frustrated noise, soft enough that the soul in her grasps will not hear.

“then i’ll make sure he knows what to do if they ever force him into that role again,” she practically snarls.

shire drifts a little further away, and sighs. not out of sadness or frustration, but out of something more positive.

“good luck on that, pandora,” shire says. he looks at her phoenix once more, and his eyes soften. gently, he brushes against the soul. “and a restful sleep to you, little one.”

it is a goodbye. pandora hums camar’s song to her phoenix, and his soul relaxes. she wanders, feet brushing against dewy grass, and she plans.


	2. myth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> camar sighs, and floats until she is right besides him. her long red, blue and white cape drags across the forest floor. “things will change soon,” she repeats. “tommy is officially dead.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> camar is L’manburg!! she’s named after the camarvan because that’s cool
> 
> anyways this is a fundy-centric chapter and the lfundyburg au is focused more in this chapter so yeahhh
> 
> tw for panic attacks. yes, multiple. I’ll put a description of the chapter towards the end if you want to skip all that
> 
> once again thank you to nik for beta-ing!

fundy’s knees buckle under him as a wave of nausea and pain washed through his body. he gasps as the pain takes him by surprise, and manages to catch himself on a nearby wall. he resists the urge to throw up, not in public, not like this.

“what the fuck,” he whispers, dread curling in his stomach as he remembers that the only other time he’s felt something like this was during doomsday, and during wilbur’s… death.

_death._

did someone die?

if so, who died?

after a while, he manages to get up on unsteady legs. closing his eyes, he tugs on the bond between him and camar insistently, and with maybe more than just a hint of panic.

“i should’ve remembered that you’ll feel it.” camar says, upon materialising to life. she looks a lot more human than she usually does; she’s much more opaque than usual, and it makes her look more passable as a human. her colours are duller, too.

“what happened?” fundy asks, desperate and panicked. “who _died_?”

he wracks his mind for any ideas. it can’t be jack, because jack still has all three of his lives, even if they’re a little more than corrupted. the same with niki and eret. fundy knows he’s not dead, otherwise he wouldn’t be here at all, which only leaves tommy and tubbo.

but neither teens are the type to just- to just _die_ like that. the two of them have dodged death time and time again. plus, he had just seen tubbo with ranboo a few moments ago, and tommy… tommy is...

stuck in pandora’s vault. with dream.

“things will change soon,” camar says, amidst his silent panic.

“what?”

camar sighs, and floats until she is right besides him. her long red, blue and white cape drags across the forest floor. “things will change soon,” she repeats. “tommy is officially dead.”

fundy freezes up. he had heard that tommy was trapped in pandora’s vault, but for him to be _dead_? 

that feeling… that was from _tommy_?

his hands shake and his shoulders tremble. he knows that fact, he had came to that conclusion a few moments ago, but telling it to himself and hearing it out loud are two entirely different things, and-

“hey, calm down,” camar says to him softly, and he feels her hands land on his shoulders. “calm down. shit, i probably shouldn’t have- key words, fundy. what’s the key word?”

he breathes in.

‘officially’. right. that’s the key word.

“unofficially?” he tilts his head, and pretends he hadn’t been a few seconds away from having tears stream down his face. camar grins, a hint of bitterness to it, but still happy nonetheless.

“ _unofficially_ ,” she stresses the word. “tommy is with pandora. she’s planning on caring for him, just like i do for you.”

huh. well, that puts the number of spirits who have some tie to tommy up to three, then.

fundy pushes away the overwhelming feeling of relief away, and takes another deep breath in. he’s not ready for these sorts of emotions yet.

“he’s very popular,” he says dryly, and camar laughs. 

“he is,” she agrees, fondness in her tone. “you’re still my favourite, of course, but i will admit that i have some fondness for him. he’ll be fine with pandora.” 

fundy hums absentmindedly. he wonders how everyone else will react. he wonders how _he’ll_ react in public. “how did he die?”

camar’s expression changes immediately. a dark look falls over her face, and her curly and split blue-black hair starts to darken to orange-black. she adjusts the yellow x-shaped clip in her hair, and sighs.

“do you really want to know?”

hearing that is a bad sign. 

tommy had been trapped with _dream_ , hadn’t he?

“how bad is it?” 

camar purses her lips. she breathes out an ashy breath.

“tommy was beaten to death by dream,” she states tonelessly. “and he… he died alone.”

 _alone_. that is the worst part.

fundy feels his breath stutter. a painful, mournful noise escapes his mouth, and he clenches his teeth so as to not just _scream._

there’s so many things he wants to say, so many words swirling around in his head. dimly, he’s aware of the tears flowing freely down his cheeks, and the blurry sadness on camar’s face.

“that’s… that’s not supposed to happen,” he can only say numbly. “i- tommy’s like a cockroach. he didn’t- he never died before. that’s not supposed to happen.”

“yeah, well, life’s a bitch sometimes,” camar says, her tone flat, though it grows angrier as she continues. “it just so decided to give an unfair ending to him, even if it’s temporary.”

“i- he died from _dream_ , camar. all three lives, gone to _him_. you know what dream’s done to us, done to him. he didn’t- he never deserved any of this, it’s not _fair_.”

“there’s no fairness in life.”

fundy doesn’t bother that remark with a reply. 

_he’s not dead_ , he reminds himself. _he’s with pandora. pandora is trustworthy. pandora can help him. he’s not gone for good._

“pandora’s probably working on bringing him back to life now,” camar speaks up, with a noticeably softer tone. “he’ll be back alive soon. it’s okay.”

“and then what? he’ll just be brought back to life, and that’s it. it doesn’t remove his fucking memories, it doesn’t remove the fact that he lost all three lives to his fucking _tormentor_ , it doesn’t remove the fact that he died alone, with only his enemy by his side, and _fuck_ , i should’ve gone to check up on him, why didn’t i go check up on him?”

“because you couldn’t have known,” camar grabs him by the shoulders, and fundy realises that he’s collapsed on his knees. “because you were taking a break far far away, and you obviously couldn’t have known. you only came back a few hours before, you only heard about his entrapment a few hours before too, _it’s not your fault_.”

“i…” he grips the ground besides him, curling his hands around green grass. “fucking- i don’t- i could’ve done something, tommy didn’t deserve this _bullshit-_ ”

he’s spiralling. there’s a hand hesitantly coming to rest on his head, before stroking his hair gently.

“take your time,” he thinks he hears camar say. “it’s alright, it’s okay, i’m here. you’re alive, tubbo is alive, niki is alive, jack is alive, eret is alive, you’re fine. things will be fine.”

fundy latches onto those words; clings onto them and repeats them like a mantra and a broken record in his mind. _they’re alive, they’re alright, they’re alive..._

slowly, his breath settles, and bit by bit he calms down. he breathes in and out, counting beats in a four by four timing between his breaths. the repetition helps.

the sun is already past the midway point when he clears the tears from his eyes enough to actually look for it.

“right,” fundy breathes out, once he’s calmed down sufficiently enough. “right. okay. i’m fine now.”

“take your time,” camar says again. her hair is back to a dark blue. “nobody’s around. you have all the time in the world.”

“i know.”

they sit in silence for a while. fundy closes his eyes, and listens to the sound of water rushing past, of faint noises from the other citizens of the greater dream smp.

do they know of tommy’s death yet?

“you can visit tommy if you’d like,” camar offers quietly, when the silence stretches a little too long. “i know pandora wouldn’t mind, and i doubt tommy will, either.”

“mhmm,” fundy hums. “...maybe a little later. he needs time to recover first.”

he ignores the slight desperation in his chest, the need to go check up on each and every one of l’manburg’s former citizens. he’ll do that a little later, once he’s sure he won’t start crying again. besides, they all need their time to cope, some more than others.

he wonders how jack and niki will react. he wonders how _tubbo_ will.

“so what now?” camar drags him to his feet, a small smile on her face. “what plans have you got for today?”

“don’t know,” fundy chuckles lightly, noting that camar’s colour has brightened a little. they’re still dull, but not as dull as before. “maybe i’ll let you decide for today?”

“seriously?”

“well, it’s not like i have any ideas.”

camar grins, and begins rambling on about many different ideas. fundy listens to her chatter idly, as he starts walking towards his house, making mental notes on some of them for a future project or two.

on the way to his house, fundy catches sight of pandora’s vault.

“dream’s still in there, right?” he frowns.

“yup,” camar confirms. “pandora would _never_ let dream out of that prison, not even if the bastard tried his best. what were you thinking of doing?”

_killing. enacting revenge. getting back at him. yelling. screaming. punching. anything to let his emotions out on the one person who has always been ruining everything._

fundy shrugs. “not sure. do you have an idea?”

“well, if you’re up to it,” a smile pulls at her lips. it reminds fundy, strangely enough, of a mixture of wilbur and schlatt’s smiles. “why don’t we pay a well-needed visit to our dearest friend in prison sometime soon?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TL;DR: fundy experiences PainTM at the feeling of someone dying. later, fundy & camar have a chat. fundy finds out how tommy died, and has a panic attack. he calms down, and eventually starts to head back home. he spots pandora’s vault, and camar suggests to go in there to pay a visit to dream.

**Author's Note:**

> to clarify, this is kind-of-sort-of-not-really an interlude to a (currently) wip. some things won’t make sense in here but will be explained in the future.


End file.
